Vanke, the Chinese property developer, has unveiled its first building outside China — a pavilion at the Milan Expo — to showcase the innovation and eco-friendly philosophy at the heart of the company’s culture.

The pavilion’s exterior resembles the body of a dragon, a spirit symbol of the Chinese culture, and is covered in recyclable, red, square tiles that represent Vanke’s emphasis on green construction.

The pavilion, which covers 10,700 square feet, was completed on time and on budget ahead of the Milan Expo, in which Vanke has invested roughly 30 million euros (£21.5 million).

Daniel Libeskind, founder of Studio Libeskind and the man who designed the dragon-style exterior, said the pavilion is a great global ambassador for green technology and for Vanke.

He said he has always been fascinated by China’s culture, philosophy and art, particularly 14th and 15th century landscape paintings.

“I was fascinated by the mountains, the landscape, the birds and mythological figures,” he said. “I’ve seen those paintings in China and in New York. I found the landscapes to be amazing forms, portrayed as a living being.”

The architect said he did not set out to create the dragon design. Instead, he drew inspiration from Chinese landscapes, stories and literature, combining his understanding of these sources into the overall design, which his Chinese friends later told him resembled a dragon.

The Chinese way of thinking has a lot of impact on contemporary thinking globally

“I was happy when people found it to be a dragon. That may be because the dragon is so connected with the Chinese culture in many ways,” he said.

The pavilion is clad in more than 4,000 red metalised tiles that Mr Libeskind designed with the Italian company Casalgrande Padana. The geometric ceramic panels possess self-cleaning and air purification properties, and the surface changes colour from red to gold as the viewer’s perspective changes.

He said the tiles represent a new, green construction technology that is energy efficient in production and construction, and can be recycled. In fact, the whole pavilion will be recycled after the expo, in line with one of the event’s theme of sustainability.

“It’s a cost-effective technology, and it’s not just something we’d throw away once we have finished using it,” he said. “It’s important to be shown at the expo, because the expo is for new ideas, not things we’ve shown before.”

Mr Libeskind is employing his pioneering technology in another project in Berlin, and he said he hopes to work with Vanke again because its importance in the Chinese market and green ideology provide fresh opportunities.

In recent years, Vanke has shifted focus from being purely a property developer to becoming a national leader in green construction. Although the company has built just 3 per cent of China’s residential properties, it has built about 30 per cent of its green buildings.

Vanke was founded in 1984 and is now China’s largest residential real estate developer, with about 200 billion yuan (£21.4 billion) in sales last year.

Mr Libeskind said he first met the Vanke team at the company’s pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and he was impressed.

“It’s a great company with a great vision and progressive ideas,” he said. “They’re very collaborative, willing to share their culture, and they have a sense of commitment to China, and to the wider world.”

The Vanke Pavilion in Milan is meant to be a “living representation of China”, a combination of Chinese culture and tradition and modern technology. “It really lives, really breathes and really changes,” Mr Libeskind said.

As the pavilion exterior is a fluid, rounded shape, with no backdoor or space dedicated to support functions, it means the interior is entirely for visitors.

Inside, the exhibition area, designed by Ralph Appelbaum, resembles a traditional Chinese dining hall. There is also a constellation of 200 screens mounted on a matrix of bamboo scaffolding that create a 10-minute audio-visual e xperience for visitors as they move through the space. The narrative shifts between chaos and calm, resembling the frenzy of life in the city, the pulsing of traffic and the swell of crowds.

The interior is a “beautiful living space”, Mr Libeskind said. “It creates a brilliant atmosphere, and the space is used effectively to maximise its value to visitors. As more people move from rural to urban China, they will need a beautiful space to live in, rather than just any space. I see architecture in China in the future as being big and beautiful.”

Wang Shi, chairman of Vanke, said the design of the food hall reflects Chinese culture. As the country experiences rapid urbanisation, the people who move from the countryside to the city usually get the first taste of their new life in a dining hall with many other people, he explained.

The idea was to showcase an element of Chinese food culture that is so crucial and close to ordinary people’s lives, and at the same time consistent with the expo’s overall theme of food and sustainability.

As an aficionado of Chinese culture, Mr Libeskind said he looks forward to the country’s gradual globalisation.

“I find Chinese culture unique because it is yet to be discovered,” he said. “We call it culture, but it’s a whole civilisation that gave birth to many things, such as Chinese mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, medicine, and the Chinese way of living.”

China’s ideas about the world are progressive, he said, but in previous decades perhaps they were not well known because the world did not understand China.

“For example, when people talk about China in relation to Africa, they don’t understand that China was one of the first countries to help Africa to trade in a sustainable way,” he said. “The Chinese way of thinking has a lot of impact on contemporary thinking globally.”

This article was originally produced and published by China Daily. View the original article at www.chinadaily.com.cn